The Huitrons: Brothers with deep East Austin ties were caught in federal dragnet that swept up Zetas cartel members

Jazmine Ulloa

Monday

Aug 12, 2013 at 12:01 AMSep 25, 2018 at 10:12 AM

Federal agents came for Eusavio Huitron one Tuesday morning last summer.

They swept through the rooms of his modest brick house, combing closets and cabinets, rousting his wife and children out of their beds. From his living room window across the street, Huitron’s brother watched a parade of authorities break the stillness of their Southeast Austin neighborhood.

In court and in documents, authorities said Eusavio and Jesus Huitron were part of an operation that laundered millions of dollars in drug profits through the U.S. quarter horse industry for Los Zetas, one of the most feared criminal organizations in Mexico.

In the telling, the story of the Huitrons, who had become independent businessmen after moving to Austin from Mexico 33 years ago, seems to be the stuff of the American dream. But as they had been prospering, so had the cartel, led by top boss Miguel Treviño Morales, captured last month by Mexican authorities after almost a decade on the lam, and his brother, Oscar Treviño Morales.

The downfall of the Huitrons’ budding dynasty came after the paths of the two families were tangled in a shadowy network of accomplices and blind enablers where the innocent were difficult to tell apart from the guilty.fel

Of 20 suspects eventually netted nationwide, only Jesus would walk away a free man from an Austin federal courtroom in May, his life in pieces.

The Huitrons

On a sweltering day in July, more than two months after his acquittal, Jesus "Jesse" Huitron told his story to the American-Statesman while sitting on his living room sofa, his wife and daughter nearby.

He insisted that he and his younger brother had no idea they had ever taken blood money.

The two arrived in the United States in the 1980s as teenagers, leaving their small hometown in the hills of Coahuila and all its poverty for better opportunities here. Over more than three decades, Jesus Huitron, now 51, would become a successful Austin homebuilder and entrepreneur. Eusavio "Chevo" Huitron made a name for himself as a talented horse trainer.

Only about a year apart in age, the brothers are short — just over 5 feet tall — and brawny with intense eyes and grizzled mustaches. Their voices are gruff, their faces wrinkled and weathered. They have been bred on hard work.

Back home in Ejido Primero de Mayo, population 1,600, they were the youngest of 15 children who scraped together enough money for food and used clothes by washing windshields at an old gas station. A wealthier townsman eventually hired the pair to do chores on his farm.

The late Señor Angeles — "May his soul rest in peace," Jesse Huitron said, crossing himself — taught Eusavio Huitron how to raise and run horses. Jesse Huitron was not as passionate about champion stallions, preferring to work inside the man’s restaurant, washing dishes and sweeping floors.

His love was construction. He liked to build, use his hands. And though neither brother finished school past sixth grade, Jesse Huitron had a head for business.

In Austin, the brothers, both of whom entered the country legally and are U.S. residents, stayed with a relative and worked for a small company, painting garages and rain gutters. By 1986, Jesse Huitron had saved enough to buy his own paint sprayer machine. He then opened Huitron Painting.

Eight years later, he established Huitron Homes, a remodeling firm that fixed up and resold houses across Central Texas. His clients praised his customer service, and with the businesses thriving, he and his brother moved their families to Seeling Drive just off U.S. 183 near the airport in Del Valle. Jesse Huitron moved into a mobile home; Eusavio Huitron moved into a brick house they renovated across the road.

Jesse Huitron had 12 children, his brother eight, and as they got older, Jesse Huitron wanted them to have a pastime that would keep them occupied and out of trouble. The brothers started buying and training American quarter horses in 2004.

Quarter horses, considered the stock cars of the sport, outrace thoroughbreds at shorter distances with fiery bursts of speed. Jesse Huitron bought seven of them at a Houston auction.

Only one would be a winner, a stunning brown mare called Kathy’s Star Quest. But a young copper-colored colt named Tempting Dash would be the one to bring them to the heights of victory. The horse also would give authorities the link between the Huitrons and the Zetas.

The Treviños

The country the Huitrons left behind decades ago was changing. Years of corruption and poor leadership had allowed drug cartels to thrive. In Coahuila, as in much of Northeast Mexico, Los Zetas assumed tremendous political influence while using unprecedented brutality.

Within a decade after its inception in 1999, the Zetas would evolve from a small band of ex-military henchmen into a global enterprise with two of its most ruthless members at the helm: Miguel and Oscar Treviño, more commonly known by their radio call signs, respectively, "40" and "42."

The Treviño brothers went into quarter horse racing, too. Jesús Enrique Rejón Aguilar, a senior Zetas leader with a penchant for killing, had introduced them to the sport, which has deep roots in Mexico and a huge narco following.

Crime bosses have shut down public tracks for their private use, rigged races and attacked those who dared defeat them. The Treviños started competing in the United States for fresh victories — and also because horse racing, where cash transactions and deals on a handshake are common, made it easy to conceal their illicit earnings.

A third Treviño brother, José Treviño Morales, worked as a bricklayer with a clean criminal record and a loving family in the Dallas suburbs. He wanted nothing to do with his brothers’ crooked dealings until Miguel Treviño gave him Tempting Dash, said former Zetas associate Mario Alfonso Cuellar.

In the winter of 2009, the sleek stallion clocked record-setting speeds in Laredo, qualifying for the Texas Classic Futurity at Lone Star Park, a million-dollar competition in Grand Prairie.

Before the big race, Tempting Dash was mysteriously transferred to José Treviño, U.S. investigators said. But drug traffickers back home still cheered it on as Miguel Treviño’s horse.

Temptation

Popular horse agent Ramiro Villarreal, a heavyset man with a salesman’s smile, hired Eusavio Huitron to train Tempting Dash before the races in Laredo.

Jesse Huitron told the Statesman that he knew the reputation of Mexican horse owners back home. He said he asked Villarreal point blank: "Are you involved with the cartel?"

"He said no," Jesse Huitron said. "He gave me the whole spiel that he had gone into business with his father. I believed him."

Eusavio Huitron, decked in worn boots and blue jeans, worked with the colt nearly every day, making the drive in the early morning hours to the Huitrons’ ranch out in Dale, a cheap property in a Bastrop County flood zone where Jesse Huitron had built three stables and a makeshift dirt track.

Tempting Dash finished first at Lone Star Park that winter, winning José Treviño more than $400,000. That title and all those before it had upped Eusavio Huitron’s standing. Clients across Texas brought their horses to Eusavio Huitron, his brother said.

Jesse Huitron, meanwhile, was trying his hand at breeding. The economy had crashed, the housing bubble had burst and his home remodeling companies were struggling.

Fellow horseman Tyler Graham, then 25 and heir to a prominent Texas family in the equine industry, offered Jesse Huitron a hand. Graham was the facility manager of the renowned Southwest Stallion Station, a breeding farm in Elgin with some of the most prestigious champions in the horse racing world. Hoping to offset his losses, Jesse Huitron said he went into business with Graham sometime in 2008.

More than two years later, Graham, who was never accused of wrongdoing, would work with federal authorities and secretly record his phone conversations, one of a few signs that something was amiss. A prominent Mexican businessman who sold and raced horses alongside Graham and the Huitrons had disappeared. Villarreal, the horse agent who hired Eusavio Huitron, was killed in March 2011 in a suspicious fiery crash.

José Treviño had founded Tremor Enterprises and 66 Land, both prosperous horse rearing and racing operations in Oklahoma. He had a state-of-the-art breeding facility and a ranch named after his wife, Zulema Treviño. Yet, he and several of his associates were behind on their payments to contractors, so much so that by the summer of 2011 they were treating Southwest Stallion Station like a bank, Graham told jurors in court testimony.

Asked if those events raised questions at the time about the company his brother was keeping, Jesse Huitron said he had been spending less time around horses in those days, as Graham primarily handled the breeding and he focused on salvaging his home and painting firms.

He could not ignore the federal agents who pounded on his brother’s door June 12, 2012.

Blood money

At the U.S. Attorney’s Office in downtown Austin, prosecutors flashed photos before Eusavio Huitron of severed limbs and hanging bodies, a Los Zetas signature. A different picture, retrieved from the horse trainer’s home, showed Tempting Dash in the winner’s circle and José Treviño’s children standing nearby using their fingers to make the numbers, "40" and "42," the nicknames of Zetas leaders Miguel and Oscar Treviño.

Prosecutors offered Eusavio Huitron a plea deal in exchange for his testimony, said his son, 23-year-old Adrian Huitron, who helped translate for his father that day. "Cooperate or we will come after your family," Adrian remembered authorities said. "But what could he tell them? He didn’t know anything about the Zetas."

Fifteen suspects were caught in the initial nationwide raid. Jesse Huitron and others were arrested later — some because defendants, including Eusavio Huitron, did not take a deal.

Eusavio and Jesse Huitron were charged with conspiracy to launder money and were tried with three other businessmen, including José Treviño. In court testimony, investigators said all of the men were knowing accomplices as the cartel moved drugs as far north as Chicago and funneled cash and weapons back south.

The proceeds were poured into companies such as those founded by José Treviño and the Huitron brothers in structured payments to avoid federal reporting requirements. Mixing illegitimate money with legitimate obscured the source.

Records showed that Eusavio Huitron had a string of racing violations since at least 2007 for doping stallions and other infractions. A former drug trafficker testified that he had sent undocumented workers to the Huitron ranch to help with Miguel Treviño’s horse.

Eusavio Huitron is among those convicted and incarcerated to await sentencing in September.

But in his living room, Jesse Huitron insists that, like himself, his brother is innocent. "I want people to know our story, that we only came here to work and better ourselves."

Jesse Huitron said the ordeal has left him feeling angry and frustrated. With one brother in jail and the other, despite the acquittal, under lingering suspicion, their credibility and character have been tarnished.

He has had to reopen his businesses under new names, though the banks keep freezing his accounts. The real estate market has begun to thaw, but he has not been able to begin remodeling homes again.

Like dried paint, the scandal refuses to be washed away, even prompting Jesse Huitron’s daughter to change her last name.

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